Category: Future of work

Go Flux Yourself: Navigating the Future of Work (No. 4)

TL;DR: April’s Go Flux Yourself considers the value of values, the importance of physical and mental health, and expresses concern that 90% of the internet’s content will be created by AI in 2025 …

Image created on Midjourney with the prompt “a painting in the style of Matisse that shows the benefits of running”

The future

“There is so much power in understanding what your values are — they can help you make decisions, guide your career, and even live a happier life.”

This wisdom comes from Irina Cozma, a career and executive coach. She wrote these words in a piece titled “How to Find, Define, and Use Your Values” that appeared in Harvard Business Review just over a year ago.

This month, I’ve been reflecting on my personal values and those of Pickup Media Limited. This introspection led me to Cozma’s guidance. Her approach is simple yet profound: start by listing 10 things that are important to you, then narrow it down to three. Once you have your top trio, rank and define them. Try it.

I found it an enlightening exercise. It helped me firm up five values for Pickup Media Limited, which needed refining after almost a decade of a hotchpotch approach to the company’s services and no considered thought about SEO or social selling. (Watch this space!) 

The (work-in-progress) tagline is: “Understanding human-work evolution in an increasingly digital world.” And the business values, which build on my personal values, are (currently) listed as follows:

  1. Seeking and sharing true understanding
  2. Connecting for good
  3. Human-focused
  4. Improving – physical and mental – health
  5. Community-spirited

These might need sharpening up, granted, but you get the idea. Already these are helping to frame how I look at my products and services. More than that, these values allow me to recalibrate, and kind of re-tune my antenna to what’s important to and interests me and, by extension, the business. 

With this in mind, I was pleased to see that the upcoming Mental Health Awareness Week 2024, which takes place from May 13 to 19 in the UK, focuses on body and mind fitness. Indeed, the theme is: “Movement: Moving more for our mental health.”

In the last 13 months, I’ve run more than ever before, clocking over 800 miles. This has coincided with my sobriety. The extra time and focus gained from not drinking have evolved me as a person, and made me much more self-content, confident, and – according to my children – “less moody”. Cheers!

April was an incredible month for runners in the UK. Not only did the London Marathon exceed previous years – 44 Guinness World Records were broken, £67 million was raised for charity (at the time of writing), and over 53,000 people finished the 26.2-mile course – but a couple of weeks earlier, Russ Cook (aka “Hardest geezer”) completed his almost 10,000-mile, 352-day odyssey running the length of Africa. 

The 27-year old from Worthing took up running as an escape from drinking and gambling vices. Four years ago, he broke the record for the quickest marathon while pulling a car. It took him four minutes under 10 hours. Hardest geezer has certainly earned his sobriquet.

Elsewhere, reality TV celebrity Spencer Matthews announced this last week that he will run 30 marathons in 30 days across the Jordanian desert in a bid to break another record. He has spoken about using exercise for good and closing the drinks cabinet. “I’m interested in understanding how far I can push myself,” he told Lorraine Kelly on her eponymous show. “It’s not too long ago that doing any running of any kind would have been difficult.” (For more on this please listen to the latest episode of Upper Bottom.)

It’s incredible what people can do with a little physical movement. Starting is often the most challenging part, which is why initiatives like Couch to 5K are so brilliant.

Perhaps it’s too simplistic to say people are more health-conscious than before the coronavirus crisis. Yet one can’t ignore that over 840,000 applications have been received for the London Marathon 2025 ballot, bettering last year’s record of 578,000. (I’ve thrown my lycra running hat into the ring.)

During the pandemic, I interviewed Andrew Scott, professor of economics at London Business School and author of The 100 Year Life and – this year – The Longevity Imperative. His core message, which has propelled me, is: “Invest in your future self by eating and drinking less, and moving more.” It’s simple, when you put it like that. I suppose it’s like the value of good values. 

From now on, I’ll be approaching my work using these business values. And in May, I’ll be busy speaking, hosting roundtables and panels across the UK. First, in London, I’ll be discussing hot human-work evolution topics at a business school. 

Also in the capital, I’m moderating a closed session for a new client that explores the future of remote work by discussing the strategic transformations necessary for organisations to drive long-term success. This is a subject I’m passionate about – I wrote about my fears around the entrenchment of a two-tier workforce due to the Flexible Working Bill in my April column for UKTN (and I use the same argument in a debate piece in tomorrow’s City AM).

Later in the month, I’ll be at DTX Manchester, leading a session exploring the value of artificial intelligence in the modern workplace. If you will be at Manchester Central on May 22 please come and say hello. With some 90% of all online content likely to be generated by AI next year, according to some experts, being more human in the digital age has never been more critical.

The present

Investing in a Garmin watch has helped my running – I set a personal best in the London Landmarks half-marathon in early April, no small thanks to Garmin coach. The gadget provides a welter of data – including one’s “body battery”. This morning, I began the day on 87% battery. I must catch up on my sleep this evening. But others might not be so lucky.

What to make of the news emanating from South Korea about Samsung? The electronics giant has recently announced that it will make executives work six-day weeks following its worst financial results in a decade. As more progressive companies push ahead with four- or even three-day working weeks and have found productivity improving, this diktat is wrongheaded and, I suspect, will be counterproductive. How will Samsung attract and retain top talent?

Meanwhile, 82% of employees globally are at risk of burnout this year, according to the HR consulting firm Mercer, and only half of employers design work with wellbeing in mind. How can people move more, and improve their mental and physical health, if they are chained to their desks? This isn’t even standing still; it’s going backwards.

Worryingly, different research indicates that people are suffering in silence. In the United States, 43% of workers say they are experiencing burnout, but almost half (47%) are hesitant to discuss burnout issues with their bosses, finds the latest Workforce Monitor survey from the American Staffing Association and Harris Poll. (Notably, 29% of respondents said their ideal schedule was a full return to the office, while 39% wanted a hybrid work model.)

The past

Two years ago, I interviewed Brian Kropp, then group vice president and chief of research for Gartner’s HR practice, about burnout. He argued that overworking can have hazardous consequences. The combination of sloppiness and anxiety triggered by tiredness will likely cause problems at work. “When you feel stressed and worried, the surface area of your brain literally shrinks,” he said. “It is a natural defence mechanism to absorb less information and pain.”

Employers must be mindful and look after their staff, including leaders, Kropp continued. “When we are drowsy, we tell people to use caution when operating a vehicle or dangerous machinery. So when employees are tired, we should not ask them to operate the heavy machinery of our business.”

After extensive research, Kropp concluded that organisations that “show a sense of caring” will triumph. Ultimately, it’s what humans have always done. He cited late American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead’s theory that we have, as a species, worked together to accomplish something bigger for thousands of years. 

The skeletal remains of an early human that showed a healed femur – upper leg – bone highlighted to Mead the inherent compassion we humans possess. The person in this example was allowed to rest and recover from a painful injury and not left for dead.

“The best caring, human organisations have realised employees can’t run at 100% for 100% of the time,” Kropp added. “We have to create time for breaks, moments of rest and recovery. The best organisations are increasingly thinking about ‘pre-covery’, which enables your employees to build up a wealth of reserve before you reach a challenging moment.”

In an increasingly digital and demanding world, employers must remember the fundamental human need for rest, recovery and movement – because when we take care of employees’ physical and mental well-being, we enable them to bring their best selves to work and, collectively, achieve something greater.

Statistics of the month

  • Of the 82% of global employees who are at risk of burnout this year, according to Mercer, factors cited included financial strain (43%), exhaustion (40%), and excessive workload (37%).
  • There were 672,631 UK applications for 2025 London Marathon, with 50.33% from men, 49.03% from women and 0.64% from non-binary applicants.
  • Gartner predicts that “independent workers” will make up around 40% of the global workforce by 2025.

Stay fluxed – and get in touch! Let’s get fluxed together …

Thank you for reading Go Flux Yourself. Subscribe for free to receive this monthly newsletter straight to your inbox.

All feedback is welcome, via oliver@pickup.media. If you enjoyed reading, please consider sharing it via social media or email. Thank you.

And if you are interested in my writing, speaking and strategising services, you can find me on LinkedIn or email me using oliver@pickup.media. 

Go Flux Yourself: Navigating the Future of Work (No. 3)

TL;DR: March’s Go Flux Yourself is full of heart (rather than brains and muscles), discusses the “relationship economy”, off-field Manchester City stories, and tips to prepare the leaders of tomorrow … 

Image created on Midjourney with the prompt “a hyperrealistic pep guardiola with a big heart on his Manchester City shirt handing out lemon shortbread to a female cleaner after a game”

The future

“In the past, jobs were about muscle; now they’re about brains; but in the future, they’ll be about the heart.”

I love these words of wisdom from Minouche Shafik, the incumbent President of Colombia University. 

I heard them for the first time a couple of days ago, at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect conference in east London. On stage, delivering the closing keynote, was Aneesh Raman, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama during his time in the White House. Now, he is VP and Workforce Expert at the professional social media platform, which reached one billion members last year.

Raman talked about the need for more, well, heart in the age of artificial intelligence. And he argued, convincingly, that the human role and capabilities in this epoch should be imagined from a place of possibility, not fear.

He promoted the concept of the “relationship economy”, which will supersede the “knowledge economy”. While the latter is fuelled by the Internet, the former will be anchored on expanding human social and emotional capabilities. 

Here, HR professionals have a pivotal role to play. They have the power to bring more humanity to work – paradoxically by using technology – and therefore spread more humanity, or heart, to the physical (and digital) world. At the moment, due to the almighty buzz around AI, “humans seem to have become an afterthought”, Raman posited.

My work wanderings this last month have revolved around AI-augmented jobs, skill-based recruitment, and future roles. I wrote my inaugural column for UKTN on a related topic. The headline was “£1.1bn to upskill the UK for future tech roles is too little too late”, and I didn’t hold back.

“In ordinary circumstances, a figure of £1.1bn – the headline-capturing amount the government announced last week to train ‘over 4,000’ UK students in future technologies – wouldn’t be lamentable,” I started. “Yet, considering total public spending on education was £116bn in 2022-23, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies – down 8% from the 2010-11 figure – it smacks of a weak attempt to win some media coverage and votes in the looming general election.”

I cited an Axios study – published on the exact day Science and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan announced the £1.1bn package to skill-up the UK in future tech roles – that found only 18% of UK workers believe that AI has improved productivity. Of the 17 countries polled, at the other end of the scale were India (67%), Indonesia (65%), and the UAE (62%).

Certainly, AI literacy is a hot topic, with frontrunners arguing leaders need to set the example, and support such learning and education across their organisations. Raman stated that 44% of UK companies are currently helping employees become AI literate – at the top was India, with 52%.

Earlier in March, I attended a Workday roundtable titled “Leveraging AI to Foster Skills and Inclusivity”. I have a vested interest in the future of work, not least because I’m the father of two young children. I explained to the panellists that I think the current school curriculum is unsuitable for tomorrow’s workers and asked how I should best prepare them.

My thinking on this subject has long been based on the so-called 4 Cs of 21st-century learning: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. All four involve the heart Shafik is talking about. And they are why I’m pleased my son plays rugby – team sport is excellent for developing all four Cs. It’s also good for shared winning and losing experiences, which can be clouded in the digital age, and warped by social media – more on this below.

The Workday roundtable panellists shared my concern that today’s schooling is unfit for tomorrow. Yet they offered some useful extracurricular tips. For instance, Michael Houlihan, CEO of Generation UK and Ireland, which recruits, trains, and places unemployed young adults into career-launching jobs, suggested using generative AI tools to engage kids, such as having them interact with characters from their favourite books. This can turn a “spark” of interest into a “raging fire of learning and passion”.

He argued that exposing kids to technology and getting them comfortable with it through play at a young age is essential. Online learning tools and platforms, like Khan Academy, are creating exciting generative AI tools to help teach kids subjects like maths in an engaging, interactive way.

I was heartened by these answers, and Shafik’s quotation supported this movement toward the “relationship economy” – one accessed through technology but with humanity at its beating centre.

The present

I enjoy ghostwriting thought leadership articles for various executives – pinching expert opinions and inhabiting their psyche is like being an actor on the stage – and last week, I spoke with a Dutch consultant about geopolitical tensions. Refreshingly, he would not be led by my rather gloomy narrative. 

He countered that, despite what one might see and hear in the media, humanity is in a relatively safe period. The reason most of us are more prone to doom-mongering is down to social media, which amplifies everything and causes collective anxiety to rocket, he posited. 

While what’s happening in Ukraine and Gaza is horrific, and the climate crisis looms like a black cloud, undoubtedly, there is something in this hypothesis. How pleasing, then, that on Monday, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that will ban social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds. If – and it’s not a given, especially considering who might (re)enter the White House – it becomes law, it will take effect on January 1.

It’s somewhat out of character for former presidential candidate DeSantis. Indeed, during a 2022 rally in protest of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned the Roe versus Wade abortion ruling, Democratic State Senator Tina Polsky announced to the crowd of about 250 at the Esplanade in Downtown Fort Lauderdale that DeSantis couldn’t care less about – especially his wife and daughters. “He’s heartless,” she said.

Perhaps DeSantis has a heart, after all. But will other states – and countries – follow suit? With Father Christmas having gifted my eldest child a Nintendo Switch last Christmas, but a few years off finding a smartphone under the tree, I sincerely hope so. 

Social media platforms are toxic for society and corroding young minds – and older ones. I’ve removed all social media apps – bar LinkedIn, which is useful for work – from my phone, and gone to the extreme of using a grayscale setting so that the display is less appealing (if you are thinking of doing this, be warned that it is a nightmare to locate Lime bike parking bays in central London). 

Pep Guardiola, Manchester City’s manager, is someone else who has a heart. And I’m not writing that just because I’m a (long-standing) fan of the club (I was in Istanbul last June, cheering on at the triumphant Champions League final). 

At the start of the month, I was fortunate to be invited by City’s technology partner, Qualtrics, to the Etihad Stadium for a tour and a roundtable on how the club uses data to improve the customer experience ahead of the Champions League match against FC Copenhagen.

There were some lovely snippets of information. In a stint in the US before joining City in 2016, Guardiola scanned American sports for tips. City’s circular changing room, for example, is lifted from the NFL. The words snaking around the ceiling read: “Some are born here, some are drawn here, and all call it home.” That sense of togetherness is central to the club’s success. But the manager plays his part, on and off the pitch – and in the backroom. It was revealed that after every home game, the Spaniard seeks out changing room cleaner, Deb, and says thanks with a lemon shortbread. Nice touch.

City’s customer experience team are trying to win hearts and minds. Thanks to its partnership with Qualtrics, the club uses data to understand its fans and improve their experience. The department is bringing data from various sources into one place to create a “single source of truth” and a 360-degree view of fans. This includes operational data from their CRM and experience data from surveys, social media, call centre interactions, and so on. 

On match days, the team uses real-time data and feedback to identify and resolve issues like long queues. Post-match surveys help assess what’s working well versus what needs improvement across different fan segments. It serves as another example of how the muscle and brain of AI can combine with the human heart to provide a superior experience.

The past

Ian Lees was the 64-year-old tour guide at the Etihad who told me about Pep’s lemon shortbread pressie for the cleaner. Ian has been at the club since 1976, was a first-team coach for a while, and was a font of knowledge – no AI will ever be able to replace passionate people like Ian. 

He had so many incredible stories, but two stand out that show how peculiar – and sentimental, or superstitious – humans can be. John Stones, the rangy centre-back turned unlikely libero, apparently is a size 9 shoe, yet he wears size 8 football boots. Meanwhile, right-back and captain Kyle Walker’s winning goal in a game aged 14 had such an impact on him that he wears the same – and unwashed – shinpads today, 19 years later. 

We all have quirks. That’s what makes us human. As I approach one year of sobriety – April 1 (no joke) will make it 12 months without booze – I shudder to recall some of the heartless and mindless things I’ve done in the past. Yet, reflecting on those drunk-fuelled missteps – and near-death experiences, as explored in a recent Upper Bottom podcast episode) – means the 2.0 version of me will be a better human.

Statistics of the month

  • Over half (55%) of IT leaders feel pressure from their organisation’s leadership to implement new AI technology, according to Asana’s Work Innovation Lab. Yet, a quarter regret investing in AI too quickly, showing that business pressure means AI implementation isn’t as thoughtful as it could be.
  • One in ten (10%) employees have witnessed or experienced sexual harassment at work in the UK, but nearly half (49%) of these did not report it, finds Personio.
  • Gartner research indicates only 46% of employees feel supported trying to grow their careers at their organisation.

Stay fluxed – and get in touch! Let’s get fluxed together …

Thank you for reading Go Flux Yourself. Subscribe for free to receive this monthly newsletter straight to your inbox.

All feedback is welcome, via oliver@pickup.media. If you enjoyed reading, please consider sharing it via social media or email. Thank you.

And if you are interested in my writing, speaking and strategising services, you can find me on LinkedIn or email me using oliver@pickup.media. 

Go Flux Yourself: Navigating the Future of Work (No. 2)

TL;DR: February’s Go Flux Yourself discusses FOBO – the fear of becoming obsolete – tarot readings, why communication (and not relying on AI) matters more than ever, and leaping out of one’s comfort zone …

Image created on Midjourney with the prompt “the page of swords taking a leap outside of his comfort zone in the style of an Edgar Degas painting”

The future

“It always feels too soon to leap. But you have to. Because that’s the moment between you and remarkable.”

So wrote American author, entrepreneur and former dot-com business executive Seth Godin in his prescient 2015 book, Leap First: Creating work that matters. It’s a fitting quotation. Not least because today is February 29 – a remarkable date only possible in a leap year. 

It’s appropriate also because most of us must jump out of our comfort zones – whether voluntarily or shoved – and try new things for work and pleasure in this digital age. We want to be heard, to be valued. Moreover, there is a collective FOBO – fear of being obsolete (as discussed with suitable levity on the Resistance is Futile podcast this week).

As someone primarily known as a writer, I have felt FOBO in the last 15 months, since the advent of generative artificial intelligence. So much so that when I was sitting in a cafe, waiting for my car to be serviced in November – a year after OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT – I couldn’t help but approach, with nervous excitement, the tarot card reader on the next table, whose 10.30am booking hadn’t appeared. 

I asked: “What’s coming next in my career?”

She pulled six cards from the deck in her hands, although two fell out of the pack, which was significant, I was informed. One of the fumbled cards was The Two of Wands. “This is about staying within our comfort zone and looking out to see what’s coming next,” the reader said. “It suggests you must start planning, discovering who you are and what you really want, and focusing on that.”

The other slipped card was The Page of Swords. “This one – intrinsically linked to the Two of Wands – says that you need to work in something that requires many different communication skills. But this is also something about trying something new, particularly regarding communication, learning new skills, and getting more in touch with the times.”

Energised by 20 minutes with the tarot reader, I’ve leapt outside my comfort zone and re-focused on expressing my true(r) self, having established this newsletter, and a (sobriety) podcast. (I’ve also set up a new thought-leadership company, but more of that next month!) I’m loving the journey. Taking the leap has forced me to confront what makes me tick, what I enjoy, and how to be more authentic professionally and personally. Already, the change has been, to quote Godin, “remarkable”.

And yet, I fear an increasing reliance on AI tools is blunting our communication skills and, worse, our sense of curiosity and adventure. Are we becoming dumbed down and lazy? And, by extension, are the threads that make up the fabric of society – language, communication, community – fraying to the point of being irreparable?

At the end of last month, in the first Go Flux Yourself, I wrote how Mustafa Suleyman, former co-founder of DeepMind, discussed job destruction triggered by AI advancement. He predicted that in 30 years, we will be approaching “zero cost for basic goods”, and society will have moved beyond the need for universal basic income and towards “universal basic provision”. How will we stay relevant and curious if we want for nothing? 

Before we reach that point, LinkedIn data published earlier this month found that soft skills comprise four of UK employers’ top five most in-demand skills, with communication ranked number one. Further, the skills needed for jobs will change by “at least 65%” by the decade’s end. 

Wow. Ready to take your leap?

The present

Grammarly’s 2024 State of Business Communication Report, published last week, exposed the problem of communication – or rather miscommunication – for businesses. Getting this wrong affects the organisation’s culture and its chances of success today and tomorrow. 

Indeed, the report showed that effective communication increases productivity by 64%, boosts customer satisfaction by 51%, and raises employee confidence by 49% – that last one is especially interesting, and it’s worth noting that March 1 is Employee Appreciation Day, which was started in 1995. While I’m sure hardly any companies will appreciate their employees any more than usual, building confidence through better communication is business critical.

There is much work to do here. The Grammarly study found that in the past 12 months, workers have seen a rise in communication frequency (78%) and variety of communication channels (73%). Additionally: “Over half of professionals (55%) spend excessive time crafting messages or deciphering others’ communications, while 54% find managing numerous work communications challenging, and for 53%, this is all compounded by anxiety over misinterpreting written messages.”

Is AI helping or hindering communication?

I love this cartoon by Tom Fishburne, the California-based “Marketoonist”, who neatly summarises the dilemma.

Also this month, we marvelled at OpenAI’s early demonstrations of Sora (Japanese for “sky”, apparently), which converts text to video. FOBO was ratcheted up another notch.

Thankfully, I was reminded that most AI is far from perfect – like the automatic camera operator used for a football match at Caledonian Thistle during the pandemic-induced lockdown. The “in-built, AI, ball-tracking technology” seemed a good idea, but was repeatedly confused by the linesman’s bald head. It offered an amusing twist on spot the ball.

Granted, that was over three years ago, and the use cases of genuinely helpful AI are growing, if still narrow in scope. For example, this fascinating new article by James O’Malley, highlights how Transport for London has been experimenting with integrating AI into Willesden Green tube station. The system was trained to identify 77 different use cases, broken down into these categories: hazards, unattended items, person(s) on the track, unauthorised access, stranded customers and safeguarding.

Clearly, better communication between man and machine is essential as we journey ahead.

The past

“My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel … I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry.”

On this day 84 years ago, Hattie McDaniel spoke these words after being named best supporting actress at the 12th Academy Awards in 1940. She was the first black actor to win – or be nominated – for an Oscar. 

The 44-year-old won for her portrayal of Mammy, a house servant, in Gone With the Wind. She accepted her gold statuette on stage at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel – a “no-Blacks” hotel (she was afforded a special pass). However, McDaniel, whose acting career included 74 maid roles, according to The Hollywood Reporter, was denied entry to the after-party at another “no-Blacks” club. A bittersweet experience in the extreme.

We might look back and be appalled by old social norms. Certainly, the pace of progress in certain areas is lamentably slow – after McDaniel, no other Black woman won an Oscar again for 50 years until Whoopi Goldberg was named best supporting actress for her role in Ghost. Still, it is important to track progress by considering history and context.

How long will it be before we have “no-AI” videoconferencing calls? And would that be classed as progress?

I’ve been thinking about the darker corners of my past recently. Earlier this month, I started a podcast, Upper Bottom, that takes a balanced (not worthy, and hopefully lighthearted) look at sobriety. Almost exactly a year ago, I called Alcoholics Anonymous and explained that while nothing tragically wrong had happened, I wanted to reset my relationship with booze. “Ah, you are what we call an ‘upper bottom’,” said the call handler. “You haven’t reached rock bottom but want to change your ways with alcohol.”

Spurred by the tarot reading, and fortified by the ongoing sobriety – April 1 (no joke) will make it a year without a drop – I’m grateful for the opportunity to polish my communication skills, learn new skills (if you want me to produce and host a podcast I would be delighted to collaborate), and build a community via Upper Bottom.

My voice is being heard, literally, and I’m speaking the truth on a human level. In 2024, that matters.

Statistics of the month

  • On the subject of slow progress, only 18% of high-growth companies in the UK have a woman founder, according to a report just published by a UK government taskforce.
  • Nearly seven in 10 UK Gen Zeders are rejecting full-time employment – many as a result of AI and layoff fears, finds Fiverr.
  • And new research by Uniquely Health shows that less than half (49%) of the nation is confident they would be classed as “healthy” by a doctor. Time to make the most of the extra day this year and leap to some exercise?

Stay fluxed – and get in touch! Let’s get fluxed together …

Thank you for reading Go Flux Yourself. Subscribe for free to receive this monthly newsletter straight to your inbox.

All feedback is welcome, via oliver@pickup.media. If you enjoyed reading, please consider sharing it via social media or email. Thank you.

And if you are interested in my writing, speaking and strategising services, you can find me on LinkedIn or email me using oliver@pickup.media. 

Go Flux Yourself: Navigating the Future of Work (No. 1)

TL;DR: This month’s Go Flux Yourself includes thinking like badgers, rogue chatbots, American presidents snogging, productivity problems, return-to-office mandates, and AI leaders admitting they don’t know “what happens next” – but not in that order … 

Image created on Midjourney with the prompt “a Henri Bonnard-style painting set in the New Forest in England with badgers, remote workers, Joe Biden and Donald Trump kissing, and lonely males looking at their smartphones”

About this newsletter

A warm welcome to the first edition of a rude-sounding-yet-useful newsletter for business leaders striving to make sense of today and be better prepared for tomorrow.

Below is a summary of what I hope to offer with Go Flux Yourself (with luck, a memorably naughty pun on “flux”, meaning continuous change, in case it requires an explanation).

“Master change and disruption with Oliver Pickup’s monthly future-of-work newsletter: insights and stories on transformation, curated by an award-winning, future-of-work specialist.”

I’m a London-based technology and business communicator – I write, speak, strategise, moderate, listen, and learn – and you can find more about me and my work at www.oliverpickup.com.

At the end of every month, I serve up insights, statistics, quotations and observations from the fascinating and ever-changing future-of-work space in which I operate. 

Every month, the Go Flux Yourself newsletter will have three sections:

  • The future – forward-looking, regarding challenges and opportunities.
  • The present – relevant news, eye-catching examples. glimpses of upcoming challenges and opportunities.
  • The past – lessons from yesterday that might help leaders tomorrow.

The most important thing is to get fluxed, and change. “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator,” wrote Francis Bacon almost 400 years ago (in 1625).

The future

“No one knows what happens next.” Especially badgers.

The above, rather alarmingly, is the sign/motto above Sam Altman’s desk (without the bit about badgers – more on them later), as revealed in a panel session, Technology in a Turbulent World, at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in snowy Davos. 

It reeks of faux justification and diminished responsibility for possible humanity-damaging mistakes made by the co-founder and CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI, arguably the world’s most important company in 2024.

Fellow panellist Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce, stated: “We don’t want to see an AI Hiroshima.” Indeed, “no one knows what happens next” echoes Facebook’s original – and poorly aged – mantra of “move fast and break things” that was adopted by Silicon Valley and the wider technology community. But at what cost? Can the capitalists curb their rapaciousness? Well, what’s to stop them, really? They can stomp on the paper tigers that currently stand against them. (I’m going to be writing and speaking about this more in February.)

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, clarified his feelings at WEF and argued that every breakthrough in generative AI increases the threat of unintended consequences. “Powerful tech companies are already pursuing profits with a reckless disregard for human rights, personal privacy, and social impact,” said the Portuguese. But he strikes the same tone when talking about climate change, and his comments, again, are falling on seemingly deaf ears. Or at least greed for green – the paper kind – outweighs concerns for humanity.

A few days earlier, on January 9, Scott Galloway, professor at New York University Stern School of Business, and Inflection AI’s co-founder Mustafa Suleyman (former co-founder of DeepMind), asked: “Can AI be contained?”

Galloway pointed out that given there are over 70 elections around the globe in 2024 – the most in history – there is likely to be a “lollapalooza of misinformation”. And that was before the deepfake of Joe Biden snogging Donald Trump, which was on the front page of the Financial Times Weekend’s magazine on January 27 (see below). 

The provocative American entrepreneur and educator also pointed out that AI will likely increase loneliness, with “searches for AI girlfriends off the charts”. How depressing. But the recent example of a Belgian man – married with two children – killing himself as his beloved chatbot convinced him to end his life for the sake of the planet is evidence enough. 

In a similar vein, delivery firm DPD disabled part of its AI-powered online chatbot after it went rogue a couple of weeks ago. A customer struggling to track down his parcel decided to entertain himself with the chatbot facility. It told the user a joke, when prompted, served up profane replies, and created a haiku calling itself a “useless chatbot that can’t help you”. What would Alan Turing think? 

Anyway, Galloway also noted how the brightest young minds are not attracted to government roles, and it’s a massive challenge (not least when top talent can earn much, much more at tech firms). (As an aside, I interviewed Prof G a couple of years ago for a piece on higher education, and he called me “full of sh1t”. Charming.)

Meanwhile, Suleyman discussed job destruction due to AI advancement. He predicted that in 30 years, we will be approaching “zero cost for basic goods”, and society will have moved beyond the need for universal basic income and towards “universal basic provision”. 

How this Star Trek economy is funded is open to debate, and no one has a convincing solution, yet. (Although Jeremy Hunt, who was on the panel in Davos with Altman, Benioff, et al, might not be consulted. The chancellor revealed that his first question to ChatGPT was “is Jeremy Hunt a good chancellor?” The egoist queried the reply – “Jeremy Hunt is not chancellor” – without, even now, realising that ChatGPT’s training data stopped before his appointment.)

Further, the absence of trust in government – as per the latest Edelman Trust Barometer (which has the general population in the UK (39) and the US (46) well below half, and both down on the 2023 figures) – and increasing power of the tech giants could mean that the latter will act more like nation-states. And with that social contract effectively ripped up, and safety not assured, chaos could reign. Suleyman talked about the “plummeting cost of power”, and posited conflict can be expected if actual nation-states can no longer look after their citizens, digitally or physically. The theme of prioritising trust is a big one for me in 2024, and in January a lot of my writing and speaking has been founded upon this topic.

If “no one knows what happens next”, leaders must educate themselves to broaden their scope of understanding and be proactive to get fluxed. The words of 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbons come to mind: “The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.”

Certainly, I’ve been busy educating myself, and have completed courses in generative AI, public speaking and podcasting, to help me achieve my 2024 goal of being more human in an increasingly digital age. This time next month, I’ll be able to share news about a (sobriety) podcast and also a thought-leadership business I’m launching in February.

The present

A couple of weeks ago, judge Robert Richter dealt a blow to those in the financial services industry – and possibly beyond – hoping to work fully remotely. He ruled against a senior man­ager at the Fin­an­cial Con­duct Author­ity who wanted to work from home full-time, find­ing the office was a bet­ter envir­on­ment for “rapid dis­cus­sion” and “non-verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion”.

The landmark case will have been closely watched by other employers considering return-to-office mandates. The judge found that the financial watchdog was within its rights to deny Elizabeth Wilson’s request, stating there were “weak­nesses with remote work­ing”. Poor Elizabeth; like badgers, all she wants is to be at home without disruption.

Judge Richter wrote in judgement: “It is the exper­i­ence of many who work using tech­no­logy that it is not well suited to the fast-paced inter­play of exchanges which occur in, for example, plan­ning meet­ings or train­ing events when rapid dis­cus­sion can occur on top­ics.

He also poin­ted to “a lim­it­a­tion to the abil­ity to observe and respond to non-verbal com­mu­nic­a­tion which may arise out­side of the con­text of formal events but which non­ethe­less forms an import­ant part of work­ing with other indi­vidu­als”.

It will be interesting to see how this ruling impacts the financial services industry especially. It feels like a big blow to those operating in this area, and solidifies the notion that firms are rigidly not keeping up with the times. Will this trigger an exodus of top talent?

Leaders believe that productivity lies at the heart of the workplace debate – but should it? The old maxim that “a happy worker makes a productive worker” springs to mind. One comes before the other. With this in mind, I enjoyed participating in a roundtable hosted by Slack and Be the Business, atop the Gherkin in the city of London, that discussed how better communication delivers the most significant wins regarding productivity for small- to medium-sized businesses in the UK. 

The session coincided with new research examining how SMBs can overcome stagnation in 2024. Of the many interesting findings, these were the most compelling for me: Poor management was the top internal barrier to growth, highlighted by over four in ten (45%). This was followed by: Poor communication and lack of collaboration (38%); Lack of motivation (36%); and Employee burnout (33%).

Clearly, whether working in the office or not, communication and collaboration go hand in hand, and these have to improve – for everyone’s sake, with the UK languishing at the bottom of the G7 productivity rankings. 

As the roundtable chair, CEO of Be the Business Anthony Impey, noted, a 1% increase in the UK’s productivity will boost the economy by £95 billion over five years.

The past

Here come the badgers, finally. 

This month, I enjoyed a weekend spa retreat in the New Forest, close to Lymington, where – ironically – the aforementioned Gibbons served as a member of parliament in the 1780s. I stayed five miles due north in Brockenhurst and enjoyed strolling in the countryside, marvelling at deer and wild horses. I was fascinated to learn the (alleged) etymology of Brockenhurst stems from the Celtic for “badger’s home” with the black-and-white nocturnal creatures having been common residents for centuries. 

I was informed that the badgers have, over the years, built an underground tunnel that stretches from Brockenhurst to Lymington. Human attempts to block the way, and collapse the tunnel, have come to nought. The badgers are resilient and inventive, they will always dig around obstacles, and make new tunnels. It struck me that we should all be more like badgers.

Statistics of the month

  • Only 8% of European businesses have adopted AI, whereas the number is over 50% in the United States, according to Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director General of DIGITALEUROPE.
  • Cisco’s 2024 Data Privacy Benchmark Study shows more than one-quarter of organisations have banned the use of generative AI, highlighting the growing privacy concerns and the trust challenges facing organisations over their use of AI.
  • O.C. Tanner’s 2024 Global Culture Report revealed that less than half of UK leaders (47%) consider their employees when deciding to enact business-wide changes. And just 44% seek employee opinions as changes are rolled out.

Stay fluxed – and get in touch! Let’s get fluxed together …

Thank you for reading Go Flux Yourself. Subscribe for free to receive this monthly newsletter straight to your inbox.

All feedback is welcome, via oliver@pickup.media. If you enjoyed reading, please consider sharing it via social media or email. Thank you.

And if you are interested in my writing, speaking and strategising services, you can find me on LinkedIn or email me using oliver@pickup.media. 

How AI is enabling CFOs and CHROs to work smarter together in an economically uncertain period

Breaking data silos to drive strategy enables HR and finance departments to work in concert – and by removing administrative tasks, and empowering employees with self-service solutions, AI makes their working lives more fun.

November 22, 2023, marked 60 years since Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F Kennedy. The 35th president of the United States knew plenty about handling pressure in uncertain times. JFK commanded patrol torpedo boats during World War II, was at the helm during the Cuban Missile Crisis and signed the first nuclear weapons treaty a month before his premature death.

What would the youngest-serving US president have made of modern-day pressures, not least the advancement of AI in the post-pandemic world? Kennedy’s observation that “the Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis’” is perhaps apposite. “One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity,” he explained. “In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognise the opportunity.”

CFOs and CHROs would be wise to heed JFK’s words and recognise the opportunity presented by AI. Admittedly, they have had it more challenging than most since the start of the COVID-19 crisis and during the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. And, considering CFOs and CHROs have seen their list of responsibilities multiply in recent years, they may not have the time or inclination to engage with a technology that, as many predict, will cut human jobs and possibly slaughter humanity, according to some doom-mongering experts.

However, embracing AI enables those operating in these spaces to handle their workload better, focus deeper on identifying and nurturing talent – which is why most HR professionals enter the industry – and manage finances, the chief concern of CFOs.

Further, with more data at their fingertips, both can play more critical roles strategically, working closely together and with other members of the C-suite.

Holistic approach

“The best HR teams impact right across the operations and strategy of organisations and are looking outside them to anticipate the coming challenges and opportunities too,” says Lesley Richards, Head of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in Wales. “It is absolutely right to say that a more holistic approach is necessary. In fact, it’s really hard to create excellence in this type of work without all of the critical elements being well aligned.”

Notably, ‘Will AI fix work?’, a report published in May by Microsoft – which has invested billions of pounds in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT and DALL-E – suggested it will be the HR professionals, working in concert with finance teams, that can best understand and use AI who will communicate better with workers and improve the overall employee experience. 

As the axiom goes, a happy worker is a productive worker, so it is worth CFOs working closer with CHROs. Increasingly, data-powered AI is the golden thread that binds together their work, enabling smarter decisions around employee recruitment, retention, performance and career development.

While 49 percent of around 30,000 respondents to Microsoft’s global survey reported they were worried that AI would consume their jobs, considerably more (70 percent) wanted to delegate as much work as possible to AI to lessen their loads. “Human-AI collaboration will be the next transformational work pattern,” stated the report.

Clare Barclay, Microsoft UK’s Chief Executive, expanded this theme when she took to the stage at London Tech Week in June. “This wave of AI innovation sweeping the world right now is going to impact the world for generations to come,” she enthused. “It will be the most significant inflection point in our lifetime.”

Avoiding digital debt

The uptake of generative AI, in particular, has been extraordinary. Barclay pointed out that the internet took seven years to reach 100 million users. It took ChatGPT just two months to hit the same number (a record that has since been surpassed by Threads, Meta’s latest social media platform that looks and feels like the channel formerly known as Twitter). 

“This type of adoption has not been seen before and really will disrupt all industries and how they traditionally operate,” continued Barclay. “It will also significantly impact the world of work and how people work.” She cited a PwC study that calculated AI would boost the UK’s GDP by over 10 percent by the end of the decade, equating to an additional £232 billion.

To take advantage of AI, though, finance and HR teams must look up, urged Barclay. Referencing more Microsoft research, she warned that 64 percent of workers didn’t have enough time or energy to complete their daily jobs. “They’re challenged and overwhelmed with the pace of work, burnout and a lack of productivity. We call this deluge of information ‘digital debt’, sapping energy, slowing down the ability to think clearly and severely impacting thinking for innovation.”

AI can assist. “There’s been a lot of discussion about job losses and the impact of AI, but the research showed that leaders around the globe are the least interested in using AI to cut jobs,” said Barclay. “Instead, they believe, and value how, it will help employees to be more productive and focus on more meaningful work, as well as having wellbeing benefits – obviously one of the overheads of this digital debt.”

In short, AI provides finance and HR teams with digital assistants, or ‘copilots’, as Microsoft calls them. “These copilots will help workers manage this digital deluge, prioritise the most important tasks, create compelling content and improve their creativity significantly,” added Barclay. “Ultimately, this is about using this technology to help employees navigate what matters most to them.”

AI as copilot

If used correctly, AI in its various forms will ease the workload for HR and finance teams, says Paris-based Helen Poitevin, Distinguished VP Analyst, HCM at Gartner. “In future, as AI can provide hyper-personalised recommendations and insights around employees, HR professionals will be able to better support staff in creating career development plans, streamlining documentation and improving the onboarding process, among other things.”

Daniel Pell, UKI Country Manager for Workday, says HR departments are already establishing more ‘self-service’ tools for employees that reduce their administration workload. Increasingly, companies empower staff to book holidays via a smartphone application or intranet portal – no need to plead with HR for time off.

Yet, more crucially, learning is not keeping up with the pace of work. According to Work Economic Forum projections, 60 percent of the workforce requires upskilling by 2027, but less than half have access to the necessary training.

Again, AI can help CHROs and, in turn, CFOs. “Using AI to identify and predict skills for prospective and current employees enables more effective job matching and career development,” says Pell. By acting on recommendations surfaced by AI, HR professionals can proactively approach staff that have been in the same role for three years, for instance, to offer an appealing internal move. This engagement extends the employee’s lifecycle within an organisation.

Showing a small amount of recognition can go a long way, too. LinkedIn research found that saying ‘thank you’ to employees four times a year raised their retention rate to 96 percent. With AI, HR teams can prompt managers to celebrate their team members’ contributions.

Additionally, frequent pulse surveys allow HR teams to monitor the morale and sentiments of individuals, providing them with the data needed to make necessary improvements or interventions before a situation is irreparable and costly.

Given Gallup’s most recent ‘State of the global workplace’ report found that 2022’s 23 percent employee engagement was a record high, there is significant room for improvement in this area. But by using AI to boost this figure, CHROs and CFOs working in tandem will become the beating heart of company strategy in the digital age.

This article was first published in Workday’s SmarterCFO magazine in autumn 2023

Is 5G the key to a truly digital society?

A panel of experts – including Vodafone UK, NatWest’s Boxed and Google – say asset tracking and optimising connected buildings and vehicles are some of the more encouraging 5G use cases, but we need better collaboration and storytelling to narrow the digital divide and create a truly digital society in the UK

Nick Gliddon, Vodafone UK’s director of business, argues that 5G is crucial to help both communities and businesses make swift and wide-ranging progress. Earlier this year, Vodafone research calculated that having a best-in-class 5G network in the UK would deliver up to £5 billion a year in economic benefit by 2030. 

An additional study of 2,000 UK adults suggested Britons believe 5G can improve society more than AI. The survey found healthcare (31%), utilities like energy and water (21%), and railways (20%) were key sectors that will benefit most from 5G.

Empowering people is the beating heart of a digital society, and Gliddon says 5G can help this on five fronts. It will improve connectivity, video capabilities, business applications, immersive experiences, and digital-twin technology, which is a digital representation of a physical process, portrayed in a digital version of its environment.

As a digital society grows in the UK, there are also opportunities for businesses. “A truly digital society is one where individuals, platforms and utilities are seamlessly interconnected,” says Tom Bentley, head of growth at Boxed, NatWest’s banking-as-a-service platform. “Cloud and 5G technologies provide a better customer service experience where the fulfilment of product or utilities can be instant, compared with the existing physical processes of the past.” He adds that such service “fundamentally relies on quality data combined with strong interconnectivity”.

Ben Shimshon, co-founder and managing partner at Thinks, an insight and strategy consultancy, notes that some UK organisations – especially SMEs – are taking advantage of the opportunities opened up by better connectivity piecemeal, and often more slowly. “Some 99.4% of businesses in the UK have fewer than 50 employees, and three quarters of those are sole traders with no employees. A lot of them are doing predominantly offline things like scaffolding or running a shop,” he says. Many find the notion of a digital society “quite daunting”.

Clear business benefits

Part of the challenge is articulating the advantages of greater connectivity to time-pressed leaders of micro-businesses, not least because many are content with the status quo and incentives for digital adoption remain limited, says Bentley.

Still, those gaining digital access see clear benefits, Shimshon says, such as faster invoicing and payments to improve cash flow. Digital adoption happens gradually for many SMEs as new technologies like card readers are embraced, leading to incremental improvements across operations.

Matthew Evans, director for markets at the UK’s technology trade association techUK, argues that practical needs – like freeing up leisure time by streamlining admin – will resonate more with time-poor SME owners than abstract efficiency promises. “Think of that scaffolder who much prefers to watch his son playing football than doing his company accounts,” he says. “That needs to be the pitch: these digital tools will free up that time.”

Victoria Newton, chief product officer of Engine, Starling Bank’s software-as-a-service arm, agrees the focus should be on practically solving business problems rather than leading with technology. She highlights how Starling has transformed business banking by enabling round-the-clock digital financial services, through building a proprietary cloud-based banking infrastructure, Engine, from scratch. “Starling was able to do this, take our technology and imbed it within banks in countries starting that digital revolution themselves.”

Customer choice 

As society becomes increasingly digital, though, the group acknowledged organisations must put citizens first. For example, Newton believes customer choice is paramount – some may opt for online self-service, but others still want human contact through banks, branches or contact centres. Top-down measures to increase digital capabilities risk excluding the most digitally disenfranchised without affordable options, she adds.

Another barrier to progress, says British Chambers of Commerce director Faye Busby, is that “people naturally don’t like change”. She highlights research, published in collaboration with Xero at the start of the year, showing that 75% of businesses believe their “broadband and general connectivity is very reliable”, suggesting they don’t realise what more connectivity could achieve for them. They underestimate the potential of a digital society.

Again, 5G has the power to electrify a digital society, but only once more people realise the good work that is going on. Several examples demonstrate 5G networks unleashing transformative applications, and most have been made possible thanks to visionary partners.

Gliddon calls Coventry “the most advanced 5G city in the UK”, partly because the city council, who have collaborated with Vodafone for almost a decade, is so progressive. The council gained smart-city capabilities by providing planning assistance to deploy 5G antennas rapidly, improving traffic flow, air quality monitoring and municipal operations. Coventry is creating a smart energy grid to better manage local renewable power generation by building on these digital foundations.

Coventry University is also the first in the UK to successfully deploy a 5G Standalone network. The forward-thinking council mandated 5G labs at Coventry University to support next-generation teaching in subjects like healthcare and engineering. Students can now access immersive learning through technologies like virtual reality. 

For instance, healthcare students are using virtual reality and augmented reality to explore the human body like never before. Professors at the university use a headset and 5G allows them to access any part of the body during a lesson, making points and taking questions from students in real time, making the teaching experience much more flexible and interactive.

Elsewhere, for environmental services provider Veolia, 5G enables real-time asset tracking. Veolia’s head of digital strategy and innovations, Chris Burrows, outlines how sensors on the company’s recycling-collection trucks can ensure it takes 16.5 seconds – or fewer – to complete a bin empty, identify potholes, and build air-quality maps across cities. 

CCTV cameras on Veolia’s trucks also use edge computing to pinpoint potential collisions, analysing footage instantly. “It effectively gives you a threat-to-life score,” he says. This facilitates rapid accident responses while providing evidence against false claims. Burrows emphasises that realising these benefits requires a supportive company culture and employees willing to act on data insights.

Meanwhile, techUK’s Evans lists encouraging 5G deployments in areas like ports and hospitals to manage assets and workforces. “The NHS wastes £300 million a year on medicine, at least half of which is avoidable, and is down to fridges breaking down, or drugs being left outside for too long. Better asset tracking would change that.”

Evans says, though, that if 5G is going to be successful and become “the digital fabric in the digital society”, there must be large-scale rollouts targeting enterprise use cases.

Daniel Peach, head of digital acceleration programmes at Google, predicts that greater 5G adoption will spur many new business models and opportunities. “It might seem minor, but there are a lot of buildings we don’t have data for,” he says. “There is a use case of energy optimisation and moving beyond motion sensors. If you track that centrally, you can entirely shut off parts of the building when it’s not in use. There is so much scope for innovation around connected buildings and connected vehicles.”

Cut the jargon

To accelerate the move to a digital society, there are a number of barriers to overcome. Gliddon stresses the need for appropriate language to explain digital innovation in an engaging, sector-specific way. This chimes with Busby, who believes unclear terminology, such as “connectivity”, remains a barrier, with many unable to grasp its meaning.

The energy demands of an increasingly data-driven society must be addressed. For Burrows, “digital sobriety” is needed regarding endless data storage and transfer. Peach expects 5G’s carbon impact to fall, being more efficient than 3G or 4G.

Finally, significant investment is required for the digital society – nationwide 5G coverage comes at a cost. Currently, telecoms operators are largely being asked to fund its deployment alone and forecasts suggest there is a hole of £25-30 billion if the industry is to meet Government expectations. This is one of the reasons why Vodafone and Three have announced plans to merge. If approved – a merged company would have the necessary scale to invest in creating one of Europe’s most advanced 5G networks. Vodafone says it would invest £11 billion in the network over the next decade and take 5G Standalone to 99% of populated areas by 2034.

Ultimately, while the core network technology promises significant performance improvements, realising technological potential requires careful human and organisational transformation. Joined-up thinking and greater collaboration between telcos, academia, the public and private sector, and telling compelling stories that persuade businesses to embrace digital innovation is vital to unleashing 5G’s possibilities and building an inclusive and sustainable digital society.

This article was first published by Raconteur, in November 2023, following an in-person roundtable event that I moderated

Cloud migration: doing more with less

To remain competitive and relevant, take advantage of nascent technologies like generative artificial intelligence, and accelerate business-critical innovation, leaders must move to the cloud, according to experts

Businesses across all industries have steadily been quickening their march to cloud computing over the last handful of years. Now, in an increasingly digitalised post-pandemic world, they are fully charging. With an economic downturn looming, there is an urgent need to innovate, reduce costs, bolster security, access on-demand scalability, and optimise resource use – all enabled by the cloud. 

According to Gordon McKenna, vice president of Cloud Evangelist and Alliances at Ensono, a global hybrid IT managed service provider, the explosion of generative artificial intelligence has only boosted the business case. “Generative AI is the biggest game changer,” he says. “The technology is not new, but now anyone can take advantage of pre-programmed language models. It has lowered the barrier to entry and is transforming everything.”

McKenna uses ChatGPT to help “write emails and documents”, saving “hours” of his time. He continues: “It’s the next wave of IT, and it allows people to do more with less by aiding them to do their jobs quicker and better.” His mantra is “be a disruptor or be disrupted”, and he argues that companies operating in the cloud stand to gain the most from generative AI and other nascent technologies. “Business leaders will accelerate to the cloud because they want to be AI-ready and aggregate their data securely on a modern platform.”

Harry Margiolakiotis, managing director of engineering at Thought Machine, a fintech company that builds cloud-native technology mainly for the financial services industry, says his company can maximise the potential of generative AI “because we are in the cloud and all cloud providers are currently rushing to offer gen AI services”. He explains: “Otherwise, we would have to set up all sorts of infrastructure to reach that point, to be able to use and experiment with these breakthrough technologies.”

Need for speed

Thought Machine’s clients stand to benefit. “The cycle of [digital core banking projects] going live is typically years, but thanks to the cloud and the software agility, this is now happening within five months,” says Margiolakiotis. “Having a live bank with half a million customers in single-digit months is unprecedented. It’s impossible to achieve this on-premise.”

Margiolakiotis says other pluses make it a compelling argument. “A cloud strategy for any business is one of the safest ways to stay competitive and relevant,” he says. “But you need to design it well. A ‘lift-and-shift’ approach is a start, but becoming cloud native is the best way to leverage the available technologies and on the way attract top talent too.”

The need for speed is evident for Nigel Gibbons, director and senior advisor at NCC Group, a Manchester-headquartered cybersecurity firm. “The business world is shifting fast,” he says. “Before the pandemic, I would have advised organisations to take baby steps, but you actually need to hit the accelerator. Organisations that can operate to the edge of their risk envelope should commit to the cloud faster due to a raft of benefits. We can now take monolithic applications, old-legacy stuff, and transform them at a speed that no one appreciated a couple of years ago.”

Moreover, yesterday’s model won’t be fit for tomorrow – beware the cloud paradigm of doing more for less – the reality is to prepare to be ‘doing more with more’ and expediting innovation for growth. Yet, a certain amount of caution is required regarding mindset and expertise, Gibbons warns. “Moving to the cloud resets trust, resets risk, resets all those parameters you formerly operated under on-premise,” he says. “Too many organisations who have rushed to the cloud have gotten themselves into awkward situations, where they thought they could float the traditional control frameworks, models, and ways of operating.”

Data privacy concerns

Gibbons notes one of the “biggest areas of opportunity around cloud is driving down risk and taking organisations into a new band of profitability and innovation by understanding what true risk potential exists”. Additionally, cloud “brings a significant step up in terms of advanced end-to-end security capabilities, which few organisations realise”.

Meanwhile, a somewhat frustrated Nathan Hayes, IT director of global law firm Osborne Clarke, points out that the legal industry is generally slow to adopt new technologies. “Our cloud-first approach is very much appended with the term ‘where possible’,” he says, identifying two barriers to progress. “One is our clients, a few of whom are remarkably opposed to cloud services. And regulators in some jurisdictions are still a bit in the dark ages.”

With data privacy especially a concern for law firms, Osborne Clarke is in the process of “setting up ring-fenced, Microsoft-Azure-hosted OpenAI tools” to experiment and secure data in the cloud, says Hayes. He stresses the dangers of relying on AI, though, and references a recent case whereby a US attorney submitted a court brief with false – and unchecked – citations generated through ChatGPT. This cautionary example emboldened the theme that it’s best to be prudent in the legal profession. “It’s all about trust,” says Hayes. “If you can’t trust your lawyers, who can you trust?”

Mark Howard, head of technology engineering at Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest healthcare charity, reveals similarly modest advancements in this area, where they are actively growing the expertise. “We are making steady progress on our cloud journey, and de-risking is a big part of what we want to do,” he says. “We’re not a technology company, so for us it’s also about bringing the strategic importance of cloud migration to life for our wider business, as well as influencing organisational change. You have to go in with eyes open, and acknowledge that it’s a conscious decision made for good reasons, with a continual focus on addressing risk.”

Indeed, Hayes challenges the notion that businesses in the cloud can do more with less. “I’m finding that we can do much more, but it’s costing much more, too.”

Long-term value

Perhaps Elon Musk would sympathise with this observation, given that the cost-cutting billionaire allegedly stopped paying Google Twitter’s $300 million (£236 million) a year bill for cloud services, possibly leading to disastrous user limitations when the contract expired on July 1. 

In response to Hayes, Gibbons says: “In industries constrained by compliance and regulation, the cloud offers such potential for business resilience, but without care the cost can become exponential.” 

He argues that the return on investment is significant but not immediate. “Yes, there is an increasing cost, but that cost should be offset against the potential you realise as a business,” Gibbons says. “Because utility-based computing – which is what the cloud is – allows me to realise the innovation, the untapped potential, the intellectual property in my people’s heads. Ultimately, survival in the digital economy depends on organisations making that shift.”

Dane Buchanan, global director of data, analytics and tech at M&C Saatchi Performance, is more optimistic about generating efficiencies and value from the cloud. Companies can do more with less “by continuously monitoring and optimising their cloud resources”, scaling up or down based on demand, he counters. 

“Media agencies and the cloud go hand in hand, as we have to be dynamic and deal with a multitude of clients worldwide,” says Buchanan. Ingesting data across many markets brings its own set of challenges, particularly when it comes to where we store data and how we navigate region-specific data regulations. Working in the cloud gives us the flexibility we need to spin up data centres based on individual clients requirements. 

For M&C Saatchi Performance, most of their tech resides within Amazon Web Services. “We’ve enabled auto-scaling and utilise AWS Forecast for proactive planning,” says Buchanan. To illustrate his point, he turns the key on a car analogy. “Think of data as fuel; without it, the vehicle will not move. The cloud enables you to get the most out of that data. But this requires proper data governance and labelling an area in which many companies have underinvested. Cloud-based SaaS products typically offer greater flexibility, security, and more frequent updates when compared to traditional software.”

Cloud innovation for good

Security is a theme taken up by Ensono’s McKenna. A recent visit to Microsoft’s data centre in Dublin proved reassuring. “There are tank traps leading up the entrance,” he says. “There are only five people in the entire building – four of whom are security staff, and the other is a guy collecting discs for destruction. Then it’s biometric control to enter, and you are weighed in and out, just in case you have picked up a disc. How can you be more secure than that, on-prem?”

Aside from physical security, the cloud is secure in other ways, says Nathaniel Jones, director of strategic threat and engagement at global cybersecurity firm Darktrace. He dismisses the so-called quantum apocalypse – the concept that encrypted data that has been captured and stored until it can be decrypted – as a concern for the immediate term. Gibbons agrees: “This is one of the reasons for migrating to the cloud: my data lake will always be up to the latest standard around encryption.”

“A more pressing issue is for businesses to understand themselves, their own infrastructure and high-value assets, in the transition to a cloud-first approach,” said Jones. “A zero trust cloud model that continuously monitors the organisation’s internal and external attack surface will help cost-wise but also take advantage of the shared responsibility model in cyber risk transference.”

While tech will possibly save the world, there is certainly an element of digital Darwinism for businesses to contend with, Jones adds. “From an IT perspective, if you’re not moving to the cloud, your business will die,” he concludes.

This article was first published by Raconteur, following an in-person roundtable event that I moderated in June 2023

How artificial intelligence is making HR more human

HR teams are already using AI-based tech to communicate better with employees, improve career mobility inside their organisations and make well-timed authentic acknowledgements of people’s contributions

How many HR managers acknowledged Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day on 16 July? It probably passed unnoticed by most, considering the ever-growing list of tasks demanding the profession’s attention.

Even if they did have a minute to look up from their work and appreciate the power of this fast-developing technology, is there any reason to celebrate something that’s likely to put millions of people out of a job? 

‘Yes’ should be the answer to that question. AI’s ability to automate certain tasks and reduce administrative workloads promises to make the HR practitioner’s role more human. Embracing AI should free professionals in this space to devote more time and energy to identifying talent and nurturing it, which is why most people enter the field in the first place. And, with more and better information at its fingertips, the function could play a more holistic and strategically important role.

But have HR teams become too overloaded with extra work to take this great opportunity? 

How HR’s role has expanded

During the Covid crisis, HR teams were “mostly in survival mode”, says Dr Aaron Taylor, head of Arden University’s School of Human Resource Management. “As well as figuring out how employees could work from home, they needed to provide extra support for their mental and physical wellbeing while adhering to health guidelines.”

Progressive organisations will start to broaden how they use generative AI and it will benefit both employees and HR teams

He points out that, thanks to shifting workforce trends, many HR leaders were involved in C-level decisions to keep companies functioning, as well as to handle restructuring operations and redundancy programmes. 

“The profession’s evolution over the past 25 years – from ‘pay and rations’ to the strategic role it plays today – has, quite possibly, been more radical than that of any other business function,” Taylor argues.

Eric Mosley, co-founder and CEO of HR software firm Workhuman, agrees that HR has gone through “a very hectic, chaotic time. There’s been a complete whiplash, with trends veering from one direction to another.” 

Outlining the chaotic nature of the Covid era, Mosley points to remote working, back-to-office mandates, quiet quitting, loud quitting, the great resignation and, as economic uncertainty prevails, the so-called big stay.

AI’s part in the future of HR

Helen Poitevin is a distinguished vice-president and analyst focusing on HR tech at research giant Gartner. She says that “a debate is raging about the future of work between ‘explorers’, who embrace new tech and ways of working, and ‘restorers’, who believe companies should be using tried and tested methods. AI has emerged as one of the disruptive technologies at the heart of this conversation.”

Poitevin reports that AI is already playing a role in HR operations ranging from policy-making to recruitment. A global survey of HR leaders published by Gartner in July indicates that 5% have implemented generative AI, for instance, while 9% are piloting its use. 

“In the future, progressive organisations will start to broaden how they use generative AI. It will benefit both employees and HR teams,” she predicts. “A quarter of HR leaders are planning to use it to create hyper-personalised career development plans, for instance.”

Poitevin adds that HR professionals can, when equipped with the right tech, “better understand employees and so provide more human advice” that’s better tailored to each person’s needs. 

Taylor agrees that the profession has been placing greater emphasis on understanding employees as people. “There is much more importance on the ‘human’ aspects of HR now, especially when looking at employee experience,” he says. “This is no longer solely about ensuring regulatory compliance. This is about going that extra mile to know what makes employees tick and how that aligns with the company’s overall strategy.”

Skills development and career progression

While it’s never exactly been strong, the quality of communications between HR and the shop floor has worsened in recent years. New research by data science consultancy Profusion indicates that only 24% of employees are “fully comfortable” discussing workplace problems with the HR team, for example. 

Profusion’s CEO, Natalie Cramp, notes that the pandemic-induced shift towards remote working has “severely hampered the relationship between workers and their HR representatives, eroding any sense of trust and understanding”. 

This is about going that extra mile to know what makes employees tick and how that aligns with the company’s overall strategy

A study published in May by Microsoft, which has invested heavily in generative AI, argues that HR practitioners who understand the technology and use it well will become better communicators with the power to improve the employee experience. 

“Human-AI collaboration will be the next transformational work pattern,” the research report predicts, proposing the notion of using AI as a “co-pilot”. 

How would such co-piloting work in practice? Take the use of so-called writer’s block AI to improve communications between HR and the workforce, for instance. This technology uses relevant information about the company and its employees to personalise messages and deliver these in the appropriate tone.

An HR team can work alongside AI to map out possible career paths for people in the organisation. For instance, the technology might spot hidden potential in an employee who’s been flying under the radar and prompt the team to alert that individual to an appealing internal role that would suit their talents and offer them a valuable development opportunity.

AI can enable better employee recognition

AI can also aid employee recognition – a wellbeing-boosting intervention that can be as simple as thanking someone publicly, yet is lacking in many workplaces. LinkedIn has reported achieving a 96% retention rate among employees whose work was acknowledged at least four times a year. With the prompting of AI, HR teams can recognise and celebrate the contributions (or life events) of employees or ask their line managers to do so.

“Recognition is an authentic, honest moment, where someone expresses genuine gratitude for another’s work,” Mosley says. “That connection can build relationships and community.” 

He stresses that recognition has the greatest impact when it is “fulfilled, authentic, embedded in the culture, individualised and equitable”. Again, AI tools can help HR practitioners with all of this, enabling them to convey heartfelt messages of encouragement when it matters to the recipients.

Research by Workhuman suggests that giving recognition is mutually beneficial. Managers who have done so in the past two months are more likely than those who haven’t to love their jobs (75% versus 48%) and identify as highly engaged (89% versus 64%).

Building on this last data point, Gallup’s most recent State of the Global Workplace report pegged employee engagement at about 23% last year. Given that this was the highest recorded percentage since the company started gathering such data in 2009, there is clearly significant room for improvement. 

Now, thanks to AI, HR teams have no excuse not to be more human in the digital era, recognise the good work of others and gain job satisfaction in the process.

This article was first published by Raconteur, as part of Future of HR special report in The Times, in July 2023

‘Anti-meaningless work’: How Gen Zers are redefining traditional career paths

Gen Zers are forcing employers to evolve their ways of working. And rather than lamenting today’s youth, older business leaders would be wise to accommodate the workforce’s youngest generation better. 

Moving away from traditional career paths to encourage non-linear development makes sense for all parties in 2023. A new approach and fresh thinking are critical. “Logic will get you from A to B,” said Albert Einstein. “Imagination will take you everywhere.”

Events spurred by the coronavirus crisis have upended many norms. Still, it is arguably the Gen Z cohort that has suffered the most through disjointed education, severely limited early-career opportunities, and a lack of in-person work and play experiences, in addition to the psychological impact of Covid-19. Now, Gen Z is in the driving seat to propel meaningful change and usher in a new work paradigm.

“The last three years have enabled Gen Zers to reap the flexibility benefits of remote working with many more deciding to optimize for a lifestyle as a digital nomad,” said Charlie Rogers, a London-based executive team coordinator at The Portfolio Collective (a global community of more than 8,000 portfolio professionals) and founder of Mastery in Your 20s, a community platform to equip people in their third decade with the skills to take “their own pathless path.”

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in June 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

As great resignation trend slows, here’s how companies are enticing ex-employees back

There was muted celebration in HR departments across the U.S. when, on Apr. 4, the latest data release on employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the Great Resignation may have finally slowed down – if not quit – in some so-called knowledge-working industries. However, the trend was still evident in many blue-collar industries.

“It’s no surprise that blue-collar workers are continuing their exodus while office workers have quickly realized the grass probably isn’t greener,” said Leslie Tarnacki, global CHRO for WorkForce Software. She argued the findings proved that if employees were handed the flexibility, autonomy, and “proper tools to fulfill their roles efficiently,” they were “far more likely” to stay with their organizations.

Michigan-based Tarnacki explained the slowdown of the Great Resignation for desked workers. “Much of it was spurred by a demand for flexibility and better work-life balance, which most employers have been able to deliver in some way with remote working and flexible hours,” she said. “For front-line and deskless shift workers, demands have not been so easily met.”

What should business leaders of blue-collar workers take away from the new Bureau of Labor Statistics data? How can they, too, halt the ongoing Great Resignation trend for good? 

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in April 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

WTF is Quittok – and why Gen Z is increasingly doing it when they leave jobs

You’ve heard of quiet quitting but what about loud quitting?

Last year, there was a great deal of noise about quiet quitting — namely, doing the minimum amount required per someone’s job description. Gen Zers led that trend. (Click here for WorkLife’s guide to The Quiet Workplace).

Now many young professionals are taking a very different approach to head for the exit, being as loud as possible by live-streaming their resignations on social media. Their platform of choice: TikTok. Hence the inevitable hashtag #quittok.

So what exactly is quittok, where does it come from, and what are the pros and cons?

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in April 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

Remote working and ChatGPT fuel rise in people doing multiple jobs on the hush-hush

Conditions have never been more favorable for canny workers looking to make the digital equivalent of hay while the sun shines. 

The work trends precipitated by the pandemic fallout, including a shift to remote working and flexible hours, combined with the launch of generative artificial intelligence, mean that those looking to make a lot of dollars on the sly can do so without fear of incrimination.

The latest findings from the job platform CV-Library revealed that 58% of U.K. workers planned to take on a side hustle this year – and that was only the people being truthful about their ambitions. According to the study, the desire for additional income through secondary employment was driven by job security (62%) and earning more money (38%).

The evolution of measuring productivity from a time-based to an output-based metric, plus asynchronous communications – and not needing to be visible online at all times – make the system ripe to be gamed by over-employed workers. 

As @Oxgaut rather gloatingly posted on Twitter on Apr. 5: “If you’re not working multiple remote jobs with ChatGPT, you’re leaving money on the table.” The accompanying image to the post – also used above – showed an empty swivel chair in front of a James Bond baddie-like bank of 10 monitors showing maps, graphics, and lines of computer code. 

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in April 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

WTF are chaos monkeys?

Chaos monkey is a term that’s likely familiar to software teams, where it’s known as a tool to test the resilience of IT infrastructures. And with our reliance on technology in the workplace only increasing, ensuring it can perpetually sustain itself is more critical than ever.

But it’s also being applied in a different, broader way across some businesses – to describe either major mindset changes or culture overhauls.

For example, Shopify, the Canadian multinational commerce company, launched its first so-called chaos monkey in early January, when it culled a substantial number of meetings from the calendars of its 11,600 employees. 

Deann Evans, Shopify’s director of EMEA partnerships and expansion, told WorkLife that following the enforced changes, time spent in meetings was down by 33% per employee in the first two months of the year compared to the same period in 2022. And yet, the change, caused a period of havoc for teams as they got to grips with such a different daily structure.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, here’s an explainer.

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in April 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

How generative AI is muddying copyright laws – what businesses need to know

Elon Musk and almost 4,000 high-profile signatories, including engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, attempted to halt the giddying acceleration of generative artificial intelligence in an open letter published in late March.

“Recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control,” read the letter. “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

Everyone should take note when the brightest human – rather than machine – minds are demanding progress be paused. But has the bot not already bolted? And considering the possible competitive advantages if rivals opt to down AI tools, will the temptation to continue pushing the boundaries of technology beyond their current limits not be too irresistible for business leaders?

Many have wasted little time embracing ChatGPT, a large-scale language model fed 300 billion words by developer OpenAI that is “confidently incorrect,” and DALL-E, a similar tool that generates images rather than words. While interest has surged in the former, potentially the bigger, creepier issues are around the latter, specifically copyright infringements. 

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in April 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

Banning TikTok: Should companies follow the U.S. and U.K. governments?

With government workers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, and elsewhere recently banned from installing or having TikTok on their official devices, is it time for companies to follow their lead? With greater awareness of allegedly nefarious data-harvesting activity, the clock is ticking.

Political leaders posit that because TikTok is owned by Bytedance, China’s state-linked technology corporation with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, there is a significant cybersecurity risk. The wildly popular social media platform – with 150 million U.S. users, it is currently one of the country’s top-ranking apps – is being used to promote the party’s interests overseas, runs the logic. 

Organizations must think hard about whether these two supposed issues are worth not banning the app, and if, on balance, the company and employees benefit more or less from engaging with and using TikTok to inspire and amplify content.

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in April 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

How to create a 25% productivity hike: Lessons from Shopify’s meetings purge

When, at the start of the year, Shopify let loose a so-called “chaos monkey” to disrupt the Canadian multinational e-commerce company’s meeting culture, it was a shock to its 11,600 employees.

Initial panic – how would things possibly be achieved without meetings? – was quickly replaced by relief. And new data proved the move was a delightful surprise overall.

On Jan. 3, Kaz Nejatian, Shopify COO, posted about the calendar purge on Twitter. “Meetings are a bug,” he wrote. “To start 2023, we’re cancelling [sic] all Shopify meetings with more than two people. Let’s give people back their maker time.” 

Critics who questioned the bold decision might wish to stop reading here. However, business leaders with meeting-heavy company cultures are advised to take note, given the overwhelmingly vindicated strategy shift.

Following Shopify’s enforced changes – including “meeting-free Wednesdays” designed to encourage focused work – in research shared with WorkLife in late March, time spent in meetings dropped by 33% per employee in the first two months of the year compared to the same period in 2022. That time saved will equate to a 25% increase in completed projects by the end of the year, the company has estimated.

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in March 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

What ‘human-centric’ tech is fixing HR challenges

Has anyone had it more difficult at work than human resources professionals in the last three years?

First, they had to manage and enable a workforce that suddenly couldn’t come into the office due to lockdowns – aside from in industries with increasingly stressed frontline staff, such as healthcare workers, emergency services workers, and teachers. 

Next, the great resignation trend, spurred by the pandemic and elongated by, in particular, Gen Zers’ innovative approach to career development and well-being, made life even more challenging. 

On top of most companies rethinking their work policies – adding to the HR workload – the criticality of attracting and retaining workers during this period of economic uncertainty, a tightening labor market, and technological advancement, was matched by the need to train and upskill staff so the organization could operate in the coming years.

No wonder a new global survey published by Humaans – a London-headquartered employee management software company – found that 54% of the 1,000 HR managers quizzed considered their roles to have grown more complex, as they navigated an increasingly rocky landscape with ever-shrinking teams and fewer resources.

Thankfully, various HR technology tools have made their working lives more manageable. And there is little surprise that almost half (46%) of HR leaders are planning to invest more in HR tech, according to Gartner research shared in early March. 

But what exactly is the most effective HR tech?

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in March 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

Amid cost-of-living crisis, more employees donate their benefits to charities

The late American poet Maya Angelou once opined: “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.” But are these wise words being heeded in 2023?

It would be logical to assume that during a cost-of-living crisis and a global financial crash looming, people would be less willing to donate their money to charitable causes. How uplifting, then, that new data from employee well-being platform Juno suggests people are being driven by their hearts rather than heads and assisting, despite the challenging economic climate. 

More than 10% of the platform’s users have opted to donate their benefits to charitable causes to date rather than using their credits – allocated monthly by their employer, which can be spent on over 10,000 products, services, and experiences – to treat themselves. 

Further, in the first two months of this year, the total value of benefits donated more than doubled (111%) compared to the last two months of 2022. 

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in March 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

Leaders are blindly ignoring the dangers of ‘confidently incorrect’ AI – and why it’s a massive problem

Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make everything up. 

When Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI, demonstrated the possibilities of GPT-4 – Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4, the fourth-generation autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text – upon launch on Mar. 14, he tasked it to create a website from a notebook sketch. 

Brockman prompted GPT-4, on which ChatGPT is built, to select a “really funny joke” to entice would-be viewers to click for the answer. It chose the above gag. Presumably, the irony wasn’t purposeful. Because the issues of “trust” and “making things up” remain massive, despite the incredible yet entrancing capabilities of generative artificial intelligence. 

Many business leaders are spellbound, stated futurist David Shrier, professor of practice (AI and innovation) at Imperial College Business School in London. And it was easy to understand why if the technology could build websites, invent games, create pioneering drugs, and pass legal exams – all in mere seconds.

Those impressive feats are making it more challenging for leaders to be clear-eyed, said Shrier, who has written books on nascent technologies. In the race to embrace ChatGPT, companies, and individual users, are “blindly ignoring the dangers of confidently incorrect AI.” As a result, he warned that significant risks are emerging as companies rapidly race to re-orient themselves around ChatGPT without being aware of – or ignoring – the numerous pitfalls.

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in March 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.

‘Productivity-sapping vampires’: How to improve the hybrid-meetings culture

In theory, hybrid working is perfect, promising flexibility, convenience and empowerment. However, in practice, many organizations are finding, to their horror, it can be the worst of both in-person and remote working. Its logistical complexity has the potential to restrict collaboration and, ultimately, productivity. And that is largely down to the number and inefficiency of hybrid meetings.

“Employees are overwhelmed with meetings — back-to-back meetings, poorly run meetings and just flat-out too many meetings,” said J. P. Gownder, vp and principal analyst at Forrester Research, and co-author of a new report, “Master Hybrid Meetings With These Five Steps.” “Today’s hybrid meetings fail in-person participants, fail remote participants, still, fail to provide social cues, and fail the business.”

Gownder cited Harvard Business Review data from last year that found that 92% of employees considered meetings costly and unproductive, as 70% of meetings kept employees from productive task work. 

It wasn’t like this before the coronavirus crisis, though. “The frequency of meetings increased by 13% during the first year of the pandemic, and leaders tell us those meetings were sticky — they never fell off of calendars,” Gownder said. Without taking steps to remedy this problem, “meetings threaten to become productivity-sapping energy vampires,” he added.

So what should be done?

The full version of this article was first published on Digiday’s future-of-work platform, WorkLife, in March 2023 – to read the complete piece, please click HERE.